Quote:
Originally Posted by MarchHare
This is falsely scapegoating immigrants (and/or federal government immigration policy) for a problem that they are not causing. Canada's overall rate of population growth is currently at an all-time historical low, even with immigration levels being where they are now. Young Canadian couples are having fewer children than parents in previous generations did, and the number of immigrants we're brining in aren't even making up for that difference.
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I’m not scapegoating anyone. I understand the economic argument and necessity of immigration. But another demographic trend is Canadians are living longer and seniors are staying in their homes. So housing stock is not being freed up as the population ages.
It defies all fundamentals of economics to act as though there’s no correlation between the number of people moving to a city looking for homes and the cost of homes in those communities. Do you honestly think that in alternative timelines where Canada had half the immigration for the last 10 years, and where Canada had twice the immigration there would be no difference in the price of real estate in Canada’s cities?
This isn’t an either/or problem. Yes, let’s build new homes. ####loads of them. Let’s densify. But we should also be calibrating our immigration levels to the availability of housing stock. The number of builds in the last five years should inform immigration targets. Build then grow is more prudent than grow then hope we build.